NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Search engines are dying
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Search engines are dying
Eric Ward - URLwir (netpost_at_netpost.com)
Tue, 11 Nov 1997 01:18:24 -0500 (EST)
Roy,
As you have personally heard me preach in person since
the first incidence of search engine manipulation in
back in 1932, you are *exactly* correct. :)
I remember taking the podium at Web Advertising 96,
and trying to explain why search engines, in their
current (and still today) state of technology, are
absolutely 100% useless to everyone except the people
who are willing to spend 8 hours a day 365 days a year
massaging, tweaking, tuning, adjusting, toning,
tricking, poaching, and otherwise changing their HTML
on a daily basis for every single search engine.
The road to madness that way lies...
However, the powers these beasts wield is mighty, as
the currency of the Web is still hits, and the big 7
search engines get a massive amount of them. They are
right now trying to maintain traffic and leverage it
into new business, as they know they truth. They just
don't say it out loud.
It can be seen in the way every single search engine
has moved into new territory (free email service, news,
shopping guides), and in many cases into other's
territory (each search engine now has an index, too,
very Yahoo-ish in nature.
There are several possible fixes, though each has its
problems:
1). Stop with the core-dump results pile approach.
Rather then telling me there were 4,387,102 matches to
the words albino poodle fungus, tell me that I have to
refine my search further before getting results, by
submiting additonal words or topics or phrases. Make
me do this until I have narrowed the results to a
handful.
2). Take the indexing algorithm out of the hands of the
search engine, and put it into the hands of the
searcher. Let me decide how I want you ranking the
pages based on 5 or 6 radio buttons or checkboxes.
(This is what boolean is supposed to do, but aint
nobody learnin' boolean so they can buy underware)
3). Moderated search engines. I don't mean a
moderated or human reviwed directory, like Yahoo, but a
search engine that does keyword searches, full text,
and reviews all pages before accepting and indexing
them. Impossible? I guess.
4). Fee-based inclusion search engine. You want in?
You agree to pay an annual fee, and agree to a set of
rules for your pages and Meta Tags. I bet this would
eliminate the worst 95% of spammers.
I can't say that any of the above scenarios are
workable, but #1 seems the most promising.
Eric Ward
The WardGroup -- NetPOST & URLwire
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